The silver Amtrak train was gone.
In its place, coming the other way, a black locomotive rumbled slowly toward me, bursts of steam spraying from its skirts. Behind it stretched a line of creaking, swaying wooden coaches. I stared, mute and disbelieving, as it bore down on me. A scarred red cowcatcher curved downward from the swirls of steam. Behind it, a long ebony boiler gleamed like a polished boot. Brasswork glinted on the headlamp—enormous, square, shining in the thickening darkness—and on the elegant bell and myriad pipes and fittings that wound like lace around the boiler. Fragrant hardwood smoke curled from the diamond-shaped tip of the stack. The noise was deafening. I backed up and leaned against the station wall.
The cab passed, the engineer twisting to stare at me from his square window. Behind him came a tender piled high with cordwood like that stacked on the station platform, Baltimore & Ohio on the tender’s side in block letters.
I tried to make sense of it: a steam locomotive pulling a train out of Currier & Ives. Someone must have spent a fortune restoring it, and yet it looked oddly work worn. The passenger coaches drew near, silhouettes moving inside.
A wispy elderly man in grimy overalls and a striped trainman’s cap stepped onto the platform carrying a sputtering lantern.
“Some sort of historical thing?” I asked when he drew near.
“What say?” His eyes were yellow in the lantern glow.
I cocked a thumb at a passing coach. “What’s the occasion?”
“Don’t follow.” He raised the lantern. “Something happen to your cheek?”
“Took a spill,” I said. “What’s this train about?”
He looked blank. “Just the reg’lar run from Shelby Junction. Stops here for wood ‘n’ water. Leaving for Cleveland now.” He held the lantern at arm’s length, scrutinizing me.
“Okay, if you say so. What happened to Amtrak?”
“What?” He frowned, looking down at my pants.
“The Amtrak out of Cleveland—where is it?”
“Ain’t nothin’ by that name comes through here.”
“What do you mean?” My head throbbed. “I was on it.”
“I guess you know more about ’er ’n me,” he said wryly, “so go ahead—climb back on.”
“I can’t,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s gone. Again I’m asking, where is it?”
“You ain’t makin’ sense,” he said doggedly, shaking his head. “First off, what’re you doin’ out here, mister?”
“What difference does it make?” I snapped. “I flew into Cleveland this morn—”
“Flew?” he interrupted, eyes narrowing. “You say flew?”
“Yeah, I—” He turned abruptly and strode away, the lantern trailing a pungent paint-thinner odor. I stood dumbly, then pursued him and caught his arm. “What’s wrong with you? I’m just—” I caught a lungful of the lantern’s acrid fumes as he swung it around. “Jesus Christ, what’re you burning in there?”
He struggled to pull away, then stood rigid. “No need to curse me, mister; it’s just coal oil.” His arm trembled in my hand. “The station’s closed up now. I’m the yardman. I got nothin’ you want. Please turn me go.”
I released him and watched him scuttle around the corner. He looked badly frightened. Coal oil? What the hell was going on? Then I remembered the blood. I probably looked like an ax murderer. Slow down and think, I told myself.
Maybe somebody was making a movie. I didn’t see film equipment, but a couple at the far end of the dock looked like costumed actors: he wore a stovepipe hat and swallowtail coat, she a bonnet and long bustled skirt. They were waving to someone on the train.
I started toward them. A voice suddenly boomed over the slow clacking of the wheels. “You! Hullo!”
I looked around.
“Up here!”
He leaned out a window of the last passenger coach and waved in my direction, a straw boater shading his features.
“Hurry up!” he called. “We’re pulling out!”
“You talking to me?”
“You out from Cleveland?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve been waiting for you!”
The cars were gaining speed. I tried to walk faster. “Where’d the other train go?”
“Other train? Next one’s in the morning.” He waved his arm. “Jump aboard! I’ve got your ticket! I’ll fill you in!”
I hesitated. A train going the wrong way—even this museum piece—was better than staying here, I decided. With luck I could catch another Amtrak out of Cleveland in the morning. And it was time somebody filled me in.
As I clutched the handrail at the rear of the car and stepped upward, momentum swung me onto the metal steps far faster than I expected. Nausea swept over me for a moment. Pressing hard against the door, I watched cinders from the smokestack wink like fireflies in our wake. There was something familiar in the moonlight silvering the rails and the depot’s solitary light receding in the distance; I had a fleeting, deja vu sense that I had passed this way before.
“Where’d he go?” said a muffled voice inside.
I gathered myself and pushed through the door into a small compartment smelling of kerosene smoke. A sooty lamp glowed dimly on the opposite wall, illuminating a wooden table and chairs, a hat rack, and tarnished brass bowls that I guessed were spittoons.
“Jupiter! I was afraid you’d fallen off!” The man in the straw boater appeared in the opposite doorway. He adjusted a key on the lamp and brightened the compartment. “Here’s your ticket.”
As I took it he jumped backward. “Hullo, you did fall off!”
“Just a scrape.” I said, eyeing his wide floppy tie. It and the boater lent him a Fourth of July look. He was in his midthirties, I guessed. He had thinning blond hair and a pudgy face made owlish by round steel-rimmed spectacles. He wore a strangely cut linen coat, badly rumpled, with wet splotches under the arms.
“Expected you in Mansfield proper,” he said, wiping his brow. “Which are you—Jacobs or Jones?”
My head pounded in the compartment’s stale heat. I could imagine nothing sweeter than lying down. “I’m a little confused,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Thought you’d
